Sometimes I lose my life, only to find her again in a bar, in a conversation, in a completed task, or in a run through the park. She's mine because she has a will, energy, and direction. When she walks in the sand she leaves footprints and they're often crooked, stepping to a jazz that she listens to on her own. The rest of the time I leave scarcely a toe print-jutting off the edge of the communal impression where my shapen foot doesn't quite jive with yours and yours and yours. Its our path I suppose, but we possess it soulessly, without contemplation, with a murky purpose. And all the while phantom ways dance inside my head, leaving vanishing toe prints on my play dough brain and I feel them as something that could be, that could have been. But nothing more. The impulses fade before I can shift even a little toe. To translate a potential into action, imagi
ne the neural pathways that must be run. So we walk, trod, plod, as indicated, aware of a settling unease and oblivious, just oblivious to a source, an escape, to ourselves marching to no end. And then I feel a peck on the neck or forearm and warmth spreads down my spine, into my soles and into my soul. A peck from full lips, anxious and loving, reincarnated upon meeting my molting skin. She's my life. Today I found her in the restaurants and bars of quito, as I shuddered and extended an arm and bent in a demi-plie, listening to myself dancing on my brain. And she grabbed me tight in a sprawling waltz as a stranger laid his life before my eyes. Because I saw how much deeper my feet sink with her and how good the sand feels between my toes and how much happier the course. So me and my life, I think we might shine for a while now. I think we might laugh loudly, and I think we might hope not to get lost again



lunes, 26 de marzo de 2012

We are deep wells

We are deep wells. There is the here and the forever. I sit in a Coffee Shop, New Amsterdam, some techno playing. They boy behind the counter is joking in a loud pointed voice, some people you just want to see naked!, a young man has entered through the glass door, serious, a nicely trimmed goatee, a forward stare. This guy knows, the barista says, as dark hair approaches the counter. I am looking, he smiles, he looks at me, his dark eyes crinkle, we smile, somehow sharing an involuntary ripple of this surface, the joke darting and flowing from the barista into us and we receive. And I am struck in this smiling by how we share and how we do not. We smile and then I feel the depths of me that remain untouched, sitting bodily in this coffee shop of purple floors and painted walls. But we have shared a smile. I look over, now he sits again, serious, with the stare that no one can touch. But when he leaves he jokes with the baristas, the owner passing him in the glass door way salutes him by name, his face open and calm, they touch a bit more deeply maybe, do not just share a smile, but reach into a joint past as they pass, a shared deeper surface that I cannot see but perceive.